02/05/2021
What a phenomenal story - from the Heart of Ireland to the moon 🌙
On this day 170 years ago, the 1st May 1851, one of the most horrendous acts ever to occur in our area was carried out. 52 families were evicted from their cottages in the townland of Funshinagh, a few miles east of Four Roads. All the houses were demolished and the stone was heaped into two piles. The area is still known as 'the piled fields' today. Lord Ashtown of Woodlawn wanted the land for sheep farming after deciding that there was more money in sheep than people. He offered £15 per family to emigrate but few availed of this, they wanted to stay with their extended families. Most had paid their rent but some were unable to do so after enduring 6 years of constant famine. Ashtown evicted everyone, those that had paid the rent and those that hadn't. Among the families that were thrown on the road was a Cunniffe family, the father and mother had two chilldren, aged 1 and 2. They were taken in by cousins in Corrocot in Mt Talbot where they remained for a few years. Mary Cunniffe was the two year old child, she spent her youth in Corrocot and emigrated to the US in 1867. Mary moved to Milwaukee where she got involved in sheep farming. She married an Irish man called Dwyer and they had a family. A daughter married James Lawton Collins (December 10, 1882 – June 30, 1963), a major general of the U.S. Army who served in World War I and World War II. Their second son was US astronaut, Michael Collins, who passed away earlier this week. Collins graduated from the United States Military Academy with the Class of 1952. He joined the United States Air Force, and flew F-86 Sabre fighters at Chambley-Bussières Air Base, France. Selected as part of NASA's third group of 14 astronauts in 1963, Collins flew in space twice. His first spaceflight was on Gemini 10 in 1966, with Command Pilot John Young. On his second mission Collins was the module pilot of Apollo 11, the first crewed lunar landing mission. with commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Edwin Aldrin, Jr. Today, 170 years after the Funshinagh evictions, we pause to salute this family. From dispair, loneliness, hunger and fear for the future, to being part of one of the biggest events in human history. Ironically Lord Ashtowns estate had been lost by the time of the moon landing, having been put into bankruptcy in 1912. The 1923 Land Act forced the sale of most of the remaining land. Lord Ashtown and two year old Mary Cunniffe, who would have envisaged how both families would end up. What an extraordinary woman, dragging her family from utter dispair to heights few could have imagined, from Corrocot to the moon. (Paul Connolly - Mount Talbot, A Journey Through the Ages)
